Our first market-available generation of self-driving trucks will exclusively drive on highway roads and interstates. Our Torc trucks are targeting middle mile journeys, or any route over 250 miles in length. We’ve identified this as the scalable, commercially viable choice for our technology.
The first application of the autonomous technology will be long-haul, the area with the greatest capacity need. We’re working on what we call a “hub-to-hub” solution.
Simply, the autonomous truck will transport goods in the middle mile, operating autonomously between two hubs or transfer terminals near highways. The automated driving system will be capable of navigating highways and surface streets without human intervention between the hubs. Initially, the first and last mile routes, within cities and towns, will still be manually driven.
Daimler and Torc are currently producing an autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia, complete with redundant chassis, steering system, braking system, low voltage power net, network communications, and more.